Peter Clinch wrote in
:

jeslawrence wrote:
Id like to learn more about how, and where that is done... couldnt
find anything in a number of kayaking sources on the web, so would
appreciate any clues!..

Not that /I/ make a habit of it, but capsizing deliberately and
rolling up in the wake of a wave is a recognised method in modern
boats.

I know it's a valid tactic because my friendly neighbourhood coach (a
very experienced sea, river and surf paddler) has mentioned it as one
when we've been talking about negotiating surf in sea boats to get
either in or out of surf beaches. But this is the sort of stuff
that's a bit Grown Up for me!

ICBW, but I think the "where" is a wave big enough to have a good
chance of taking you out if you try and go through/over it, I guess
something with looping potential. Not tried it myself, I'm told that
you need to put a roll in on one side rather than the other to get a
proper boost from the wave.

Er, well, if you lean into the wave, you either won't flip at all, or
you'll flip ugly. It's flipping downstream and it ain't pretty.

Sorry not to be more help. I imagine it's at the sort of level where
a hoow-to on a web page is pretty much moot, so I'd talk directly with
advanced sea paddlers who have to cope with big surf for more details.

It is something you won't learn off a web page, not unless you're
already a pretty good paddler, but you might be able to if you already
had a very solid roll and knew something about surf and current, For
reasons that are unclear to me, sea kayakers seem to regard the roll as
an incredibly advanced technique that you have to build up to for years
and years. In whitewater boating, working on a roll starts right away,
because there just aren't a lot of safe and pleasant places to swim in
whitewater ("swim", in kayak-speak, means to fail to roll and end up out
of your boat). Having a roll makes you a much safer boater, in any kind
of water.

With that said, it takes a while to develop a reliable roll, simply
because rolling practice wears you out. You just can't keep at it that
long; you get tired and you get chilled, and even if the spirit is
willing, the flesh will start stumbling and making mistakes, and there's
not a whole lot of point in just hammering away at it, because you'll
just get worse. And you _do_ want a reliable roll before you venture
into the surf, because it is not a good place to swim.

I've never rolled in surf as a technique of first resort; I've rolled
plenty of times as a "plan b/c/d" thing -- oops, that didn't work, tuck
and duck and over we go to minimize the chundering, wait until the wave
passes and roll up. The preferred technique that I was taught was a
boof, which means heading out into the wave at a slight angle, the
upstream rail up and a strong upstream stroke right before you punch
through the crest. Works like a charm, although you might have to do it
more than once depending on the surf. I've only done that in a
whitewater boat, but it ought to work just as well or better in a
seayak, which is a much faster boat. But you really don't want to do it
without company in the form of a couple of friends who are good paddlers
and who know about surf.